TL/DR: I'm still very much in the honeymoon, but this thing kills. It's exactly what I wanted for a home practice/recording solution.
And now, the details. It looks like this:
https://media.sweetwater.com/api/i/q-85 ... etail1.jpg
It also has a Two Notes Torpedo built in. The Torpedo is a load box, so you do not need a cab. It has a headphone jack on the front (with its own level control) and a DI on the back. The rotary switch on the front allows you to select between 6 virtual cabs you can save onto the amp. It also has MIDI control (if you use MIDI you can apparently save up to 128 preset cabs; I don't know how to use MIDI and 6 cabs already seems like too many so I don't know how much I'm going to explore this option). You can apparently load other IR's into the torpedo (they don't have to be Two Notes cabs) but I haven't done this either.
I got mine from Sweetwater during the Christmas sale (and my rep got me a deal even better than the sale price, which was sweet). They all come with 12 cabs from Two Notes, and because it was the Christmas deal, I got another free cab pack. The Torpedo only works with the amp, however. If you want to use the Two Notes cabs as a plugin into your DAW without the D20, you need to buy Wall of Sound (they're clear about this up front; I knew this was the deal). Wall of Sound was $40, and I do want to use my DAW, so I grabbed that. Wall of Sound also came with a free cab pack. There was some overlap among the free packs, but at the end of the day I ended up with 31 different cabs. It will take months for me to audition them all I think.
While I haven't had the time to work over all the features, what was most important to me at the outset was just to play the amp as an amp, without any of the bells and whistles and digital options. I spent a few hours plugged straight in to the amp, straight into my 1x12 cab (WGS Reaper) with no pedals and none of the Digital tricks. I rotated my three favorite guitars through: a stock Gretsch 5622T, my AL2K with Buddha-wound PAF pickups and an Affiinity Tele with Bootstrap Extra Crispy pickups.
It is an incredibly clean amp. Even with the gain dimed (but boost off), I'm barely getting breakup. None of my pickups are terribly hot, so that certainly will play into it. But even the humbuckers are just a little hairy. With the boost engaged, and dimed, it does a very nice low gain crunch. But you're never playing Van Halen on this amp without a pedal. I was somewhat disappointed in this at the start, but it's become less of an issue the more I use it. First, it's designed to be a pedal platform and I knew that going in. Second, and more important to me for now, the EQ knobs are pretty powerful, but they need some gain to get working. With the master way up and the gain way down, the tone controls have less practical effect to my ears. With the gain up some and the master down, you can get the same volume and breakup levels but the EQ knobs become much more powerful. I don't think it sounds exactly like anything else, but it is a 2 6v6 20 watt amp. If you crank the bass and treble and cut the mids, you get into the Deluxe Reverb kind of sound. If you boost the mids but cut the bass, it gets nice and Tweed-ish. You wouldn't get confused between this and an original, but there are a lot of good clean sounds in here. I do NOT think 'everything at noon' is necessarily the way to go. I thought everything at noon sounded a little flat and dull. But with a little tweaking, I was really pleased with the cleans.
With pedals, the amp just explodes. Because the EQ is so sensitive, you can tailor the amp to whatever pedals you're playing. I like edge of breakup tones and I have a Lovepedal Amp 11 (a Timmy-style OD with a switchable boost). Amazing. Incredibly sensitive to pick dynamics with a rich, beautiful sound. I also have a Ramble FX Marvel Drive for Marshall tones. Amazing. It doesn't really do the hot-rodded JCM thing, but for classic Marshall tones, this was fantastic. Reverb and delay sound great in front or in the loop. I've only run a couple of fuzz pedals into it, but they both sounded great too. Basically, every pedal I tried sounds as good or better through this amp than ever before. I have definitely not run all my pedals through it yet, but it's taken everything I've thrown at it like a champ so far.
I am not very far along with going through all the bells and whistles, but the flexibility I've encountered so far is amazing. First of all, it has a headphone jack. You can just plug in headphones and play a really great sounding tube amp. The headphone jack sounds great. I am no IR wizard by any stretch, and I did not get a virtual cab with a WGS Reaper inside, so I don't have a direct comparison of the virtual cabs to a real cab, but the virtual cabs I do have sound great. I don't have a ton of experience with other speakers anyway, so I couldn't tell you that their Greenback cab sounds exactly like a real Greenback cab, but the virtual cabs sound different enough from each other to be able to recognize a difference. One or two of the presets sounded kinda muffled, but most did not, and I did not play with the EQ on any of them (you can deep dive and edit the IR in a LOT of ways, none of which I've done yet beyond changing virtual mics).
The DI into my interface is easy as pie and sounds as good as the headphone out. The wall of sound plugin works seamlessly with Garageband. I recorded a couple of quick clips yesterday (both dry) and hope to spend some time just auditioning the different cabs through the same loops to try to make sense of all the cabs. This will take time.
Because of all the connection options, I've had a little fun with setups. I also have a PA speaker that doubles as a crappy karaoke machine for the kids, but has an XLR input. I ran the D20's DI into the PA speaker, the headphone tap into my interface, and connected my 1x12. I had the cab set for 4 watts and the PA speaker kinda loud. Most of the tone (including the virtual cab) came through the PA speaker. The cab added some nice air movement and low end thump in the room. The headphone out recorded it all. Very pleased. Really, really pleased.
So I know it all works and I know it all sounds good. The optimization is going to take some time. For every virtual speaker cab, you get 6-10 mic options. You can put two mics on every cab. You can move the mic locations. You can add a noise gate. There's a regular EQ or a parametric EQ for each cab. You can add a compressor. The cabs all have 'contour' knobs - I don't even know what this means; does anyone know what a cab's 'contour' would affect? Low end? And with every cab you can, if you choose, defeat the D20's actual 6v6 power section and replace it with a virtual 6L6 or EL34 power section (that's the little 'Pre/Post' button on the front of the amp). No idea about this, but I have this dream of the Marvel Drive doing Marshall grind with the virtual EL34 through 4x12 Greenbacks. In this dream I am very happy. I am looking forward to trying this.
Does anyone have experience with the Two Notes cabs? Any in particular you love/hate? Any ideas on tweaking? I really don't know where to begin.
Happy New Year y'all.
